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About

This site is an effort to share some of the base knowledge I have gathered through all this years working with Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Python or Zope, among others. So, take a look around and I hope you will find the contents useful.

Arduino Barcamp 2011, Ordes

Yesterday was indeed a good day, and a long day too. I woke up at 08:00 (being my soul completely exhausted, as I got to bed around 3:00 the night before) and I met @r0sk, @MarcosBL, @mameyugo and @apvila30 at 08:45 to get on the road again on our way from Lugo to Ordes, where an ArduinoBarcamp was being prepared by our friends of the InestableLinux User Group.

The Barcamp started at 10:00, and we arrived a little bit later (around 10:20 or so), because we had some trouble finding the place.

The first thing that did struck me was the ammount of people attending the Barcamp, a lot more than expected. The guys from the Inestablelug said we were about 70 people in there, amazing (even more because they were expecting around 15 people or so).

You can get an idea on how much people we were just taking a look at these pictures:

After meeting some of the Inestable guys (like @nikageek) we attended the first two talks of the day. First one covering basic knowledge about electronics and the second one showing some aspects of the programming language you can use to communicate/interact with your Arduino board. Both talks were performed by Jose[1] from the Inestablelug.

Then we had a coffee break (about 45 minutes or so). Perfect time to met some old friends like @toniousli or @javier_fazouro and talk about different ideas and projects using arduino boards.

The barcamp was talking place in "A casa da cultura", property of the Ordes city council, a nice place with plenty of room and some really nice paints outside:

Back inside the talks room, @TCRobotics led a workshop about setting up the development environment you need to play with arduino, that is, downloading and installing the software from http://arduino.cc and teaching us how to use the environment, where are the docs, etc.

In the picture on the left you can see @r0sk playing with his arduino board. It seems he was having some fun ;P

After a break for lunch two groups of people were formed. One of the groups was attending @TCRobotics' talk about Orugas, his personal project that consist on a rover-like robot that can be controlled using a Wiinunchuk (in a previous version) or a PlayStation2 (in its latest version). He also showed us a video of one of the first versions of the project, where the robot was able to move by itself, recognizing objects and obstacles.

It was really interesting to hear how this kind of projects are done, understanding the whole process, the problems you can find and how you can solve them with a bit of imagination and thinking.

The other group was attending a talk about arduino's XBee shield, a small board that adds wireless communication support to your arduino board. Oscar (one of the guys behind Bricogeek) gave this talk (sorry, I've no pictures of this talk). Another good talk.

The Barcamp finished near 21:00, or at least we left it at that time (I'm quite sure some people keep talking and sharing experiences and thoughts for some more time).

It was really a good experience. The only thing I'd missed was a real workshop, like the one I attended some months ago in Santiago, where there was a table, some arduino boards and material and both people willing to learn and people willing to teach, something more like a jam session. That would be really amazing, but I understand that being 70 people that would be almost imposible.

Don't misunderstand me, it was great and I enjoyed every single talk during the barcamp, I'm just giving an idea for the next-to-be arduino barcamp (as I'm quite sure there is going to be a next one soon).

We got back in the car and drove our way back to Lugo, arriving at 23:00 or so. We had dinner in one of the usual places (dotmas) and then I came back home BUT@r0sk, @MarcosBL and @mameyugo had other plans... They went to @MarcosBL's place and they kept themselves busy during the night, until they published this video in youtube:

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Oh!, I almost forgot, you can take a look at the pictures I took visiting this album.

People from inestable are glad you enjoied our Barcamp and we expect everyone there liked it. As you said, we are already thinking in another one where we will try to fix our mistakes and apply some other ideas, for example what you say about some type of workshop (yesterday could be the hell if we tried it).

Jose don't have blog, but you can contact him by mail (josearj@inestable.org) and Twitter (@josearj if I'm right)